Tatum O'Neal is still sober, doggone it

Her dog made her do it. Tatum O'Neal tells the New York Post she was so distraught over the recent death of her 16-year-old Scottish terrier that she nearly wrecked a year of sobriety to allegedly buy crack and powder cocaine Sunday night.

She also says the police officers who busted her near her Lower East Side apartment "saved" her from wrecking her life. "I'm still sober," she tells the tabloid's Andrea Peyser in a telephone interview after being sprung from lockup Monday.

O'Neal, who wrote of her heroin addiction in her 2004 best-selling memoir "A Paper Life" but claimed to be clean and sober, now says she's about to celebrate a year off drugs and has been going to 12-step recovery meetings every day.

"I couldn't get out of it. I was going to my psychiatrist. I was doing everything I could do. ... One day, I'm walking aimlessly. I found myself doing the wrong thing," she says.

She has a July 28 court date to deal with her misdemeanor charge of possession of a controlled substance.